


Things Lost

by nb_vint



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, I have a lot of feelings about Gabriel Reyes, M/M, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nb_vint/pseuds/nb_vint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thought of a legacy is enough to make anything seem bearable, to ensure that somewhere down the line, someone took a step back and thought that your death was not just one out of many, that you alone should have been the one to live. Dying would have been easier if all the connections, the tenuous hold to that needed warmth, were not taken away in the space of a breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Gabriel Reyes deserves better and I'm really hoping Blizzard doesn't decide to do him wrong.  
> Thank you Lu for always listening to me cry about Gabe.

Is it a universal need to not be alone? To crave the feeling of the warmth of a body, the security of a thought aimed at you? It’s easier to assume, to think that maybe those who have crossed your mind have taken a second or two to spare one for you, the clichéd notion of running through headspace that would have otherwise written you off as extra, not needed. The thought of a legacy is enough to make anything seem bearable, to ensure that somewhere down the line, someone took a step back and thought that your death was not just one out of many, that you alone should have been the one to live. Dying would have been easier if all the connections, the tenuous hold to that needed warmth, were not taken away in the space of a breath.

Gabriel Reyes was not a bad man. Growing up, the teachers who stared a little too long at bruised knuckles, or the counselors who wrote him off as another troubled Latino in a world of troubled Latinos would have argued otherwise, but Mamá had always warned of pale thoughts from pale strangers. There was something to be said for a world that considered the dark stretch of skin on the body of a boy enough to indicate the darkness of thoughts. The things to be said were not very nice.

He had gotten used to either being written off from the get go or having to settle for being second best somewhere further down the line. It was easy to be picked first when measured up for ability, willingness, a dedication that bordered on a plea for forgiveness, but that was never enough for boys like him. A strange sort of guilt permeated that ability, a messed up redemption for not being the mold that everyone wanted him to fit, the poster perfect picture of the white savior that would never be reflected in the mirror Gabriel stared at. He knew his hang ups, knew that there was pride buried deep within the learned hatred he harbored for being the other, the one who would always be second best for something as simple as personhood. He didn’t want these feelings, wanted to bask in the love he had for his Mamá and the ground that gave her life, the intrinsic call of blood to blood. And yet, here was another thing taken from him.

That guilt and pride mixed together into one bad night too many, one too many scraps in the yard that turned into bad run ins with the gringos who thought they knew better than the foreign kid from down the street. As if he hadn’t bled on these same streets they laid claim to since the moment he realized there was something to protect. His pride was born of need and of bruises. 

Meeting Jack Morrison had felt like those punches he’d learned to dodge when no one else was there to take the blows for him. He had watched helplessly as his world slowly narrowed down to a small cot, the clothes on his back, and the yells of sergeants too self righteous to notice a small connection turn into the type of relationship that said die for one, not die for all. Gabriel knew the dangers of being too different, of Jack seeing the world through a lens only privilege could provide. They were different, and Gabe loved the gringo all the same. 

When Gabriel was chosen for the soldier enhancement program, that instinctual pride which he had harbored and nurtured as a shield against those long buried hurts, turned into a shared joy. He was with his boy, he was serving the country he had wished to die for since its first rejections, he was becoming the type of son his Mamá would’ve wept for if she had been here to offer words. “Mijo,” she might’ve warned, “do not follow those who would not see you lead.”

Watching everything he had worked to protect, worked to build from the ground up like shoots of maiz, be given to another with a whiter face, a prettier image on printed sheets, felt like the bruised knuckles of his childhood. He should have expected this. He did not expect this. 

The love he harbored for his boy turned to dust in his mouth, a reminder that promises from the mouths of those who did not know what it was to be too dark for those printed sheets turned to smoke when the time for repentance came. This was not meant for him, he could not have this of all things. Another thing taken from him.

He did not want to blame Jack. The same forces who had pushed Gabriel into the shadows of the organization which had drank his blood and tears only when it was convenient for it, had also worked to make Jack naïve. Jack was a great leader but that did not detract from the truth that he was there as media fodder. The sting of this rejection felt like the beginning of an end.

“Have you ever heard of a concept called the Manichaean world view?” was the only question he could muster in the face of heartbreak. Gabe was glad that Jack retained enough sense of self-preservation to understand that that was a rhetorical question.

“It’s the correlation between darkness being bad and lightness being good. Some fuckers used it to validate their bullshit when racism wasn’t sugar coated with more bullshit.”

“Gabe…”

“This isn’t a question of me looking for pity Jack. You know that once upon a time I would’ve kissed the ground you walk on.”

The thing was, Gabriel wasn’t lying. Jack had been the one shining exception to all the rules Gabe had set for himself to avoid moments just like this one. A dark man for Blackwatch, a light man for Overwatch. It was almost poetic in its brutal irony. 

The beginning of the end started and stopped with a last parting moment to feel the love he wanted to bask in once again, only to watch it drift away on the tendrils of one too many differences.

When they came for him, it seemed almost anticlimactic. Of course they had come, they had been coming since the day he was born to a Mexican mother in a country where that was synonymous with guilty. Guilty of what, Gabriel had never actually figured out. Either way, the men with chains come to strip him of himself had only queued up behind a nation who had tried to do the same for years. A lost heritage, a lost mother, a lost boy, tied up in a package that was too malleable to those long buried hurts. He fought, and he lost, and when the space of a breath came calling in the face of an explosion, Gabriel did not know whether to weep for all he had lost, or to weep for what he had yet to lose. 

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me about Overwatch on twitter, @tevintergods


End file.
